1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to an electrical, automatic coffee maker and, more particularly, to a commercial electrical coffee maker capable of making large quantities of freshly brewed coffee in a single batch and passing the coffee directly to an insulated dispenser especially adapted to fit with the brewer for direct receipt of the coffee from the brewer.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
There are many ways to make freshly brewed coffee. There are infusion coffee makers for making espresso coffee; there are drip-type coffee makers; there are percolator-type coffee makers; there are French press coffee makers and other types of coffee makers. It is widely believed by those skilled in the art of fresh coffee brewing that the French press coffee makers are the ones most capable of producing the best, most flavorable and aromatic coffee. This is believed true because with a French press coffee maker it is possible to accurately control the process to obtain uniform extraction of the essential oils and other components of the ground coffee into the hot water with which it is mixed.
In a French press coffee maker, fresh dry coffee grounds are placed in a container and then all the hot water that will be used to make the desired quantity of coffee is quickly added to the grounds to quickly mix with all the coffee grounds. The mixture is allowed to seep for a preselected, relatively short period of time with statically or while stirring. Then the remaining solids are quickly removed from the liquid to obtain uniform extraction associated with a high quality brew. At the end of the mixing, or seeping, time period a piston is quickly plunged into the container to rapidly separate the liquid coffee beverage from the solid materials of the remaining coffee grounds to quickly stop further extraction. In this way it is possible to avoid both under-extraction and over-extraction, both of which are associated with less than optimum quality.
In other coffee makers, such as a drip type coffee maker, in which hot water is deposited onto the top of a layer of coffee grounds contained in a porous filter, the level of extraction is a combination of over-extraction which occurs at the beginning of the brew cycle when the hot water is first added to the dry coffee grounds followed by under extraction which occurs towards the end of the brew cycle after the best of the essence of the already wet coffee grounds has already been extracted.
Traditionally, French press coffee makers have only been manually operated with the plunging action being performed manually and at a time that is determined by the operator of the French press coffee maker. Should the operator become impatient, and activate the plunger too soon, then the coffee can be undesirably under-extracted. On the other hand, if the operator is distracted, and operates the plunger after the time period for optimum uniform abstraction has passed, then the coffee may be over-extracted. Making optimum operation even more difficult, the optimum time period for extraction will vary with the amount of coffee grounds that are placed in the container and with the amount of water that is added to the container into which the coffee is extracted, dissolved or mixed. In such case, the operator may not know the correct timing and thereby fail to make the proper adjustment to the extraction time to obtain optimum extraction.
Consequently, even though the French press coffee maker is capable of providing coffee that is optimally extracted for best quality without waste of coffee grounds that are not extracted or coffee grounds that are over-extracted, in actual practice, due to the manual nature of the operation, such optimal extraction is not always obtained.
Another problem with traditional French press coffee makers is that because they are manually operated and require the operator to manually remove the freshly made scolding hot coffee from the container, for safety reasons, the French press coffee makers have been substantially limited to making only one or, at most, two cups of coffee at a time. Thus, the French press technique of making coffee has not had application in commercial coffee makers in which greater quantities of coffee, such one half gallon to five gallons, are made during a single brew cycle.